You've heard it once and you'll hear it again: You can't manage what you can't measure. This adage is relevant to any IT project — especially if you're getting serious about green IT. Forrester advises that before investing a single dollar, measure your green IT baseline — an annual estimate of the energy consumption, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and financial costs of operating your IT within and outside of the data center.

With that in mind, I would like to introduce Forrester's online green IT baseline calculator — an intuitive, online tool to help IT professionals calculate their green IT baseline.

The tool walks you through the key green IT baseline assumptions, including the number of IT assets, energy draw, and hours of up-time. For additional accuracy, you can customize your price and CO2 emissions per kilowatt. The tool will then automatically calculate your green IT baseline for your review. From there, you can email the results to yourself for future reference (and you can also help guide our research agenda).

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To date, IT pros have given very little attention to the “greening” of the network. Why? Three words: follow the money. According to recent Forrester research, the top motivation for pursing Green IT is to “reduce the energy-related costs of operating IT.” And when compared to other IT energy-drawing assets – like servers, data center cooling or PCs – the energy consumption of the network falls at the bottom of the list, meaning that the ROI to reduce energy use is less compelling.

But the launch of Cisco’s EnergyWise technology is likely to raise the “greening” status of the network. EnergyWise is a free software upgrade to Cisco’s entire line of Catalyst switching gear. The technology allows customers to monitor, manage and ultimately reduce energy consumption of anything “connected” to the network. As Cisco describes, EnergyWise will evolve over three phases, adding new functionality with each iteration:

In the first phase (February 2009), Network Control, Cisco EnergyWise will be supported on Catalyst switches and manage the energy consumption of IP devices such as phones, video surveillance cameras and wireless access points.

In the next phase (Summer 2009), IT Control, there will be expanded industry support of EnergyWise on devices such as personal computers (PCs), laptops and printers.

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The rolodex of Green IT projects available to IT leadership is seemingly endless. But at some point, prioritization is necessary, and IT professionals tend to gravitate to those projects that produce an acceptable financial return with the path of least resistance. And in recent interactions with Forrester clients, it's becoming clear that PC power management -- the act of powering down PCs when not in use (e.g. nights, weekends) -- is one of those projects IT leadership are willing to act on.

Do I agree? In short yes. And here’s why: PC power management can reduce costs, cheaply and effectively, while at the same time help justify more strategic IT investments and improve your green "credentials." Let me elaborate: